Thursday, January 31, 2013

Another garage sale find, and they came as a set. Perhaps a plate mat and coaster?

Another vintage purple doily. If it's purple, I'll buy it!

I think this creation is to be used as a doily - obviously done from a "cutter quilt" with a crocheted edging. Too thick for a dishcloth, not thick enough for a potholder. Looking at the points of the stars, it makes me wonder if those pieces were made from another quilt. (A quilt made from a cutter quilt, which was made into whatever this is)

I do love doilies like this - intricate (and labor intensive). Someone put a lot of love into this.

This is unusual - about 10" high. I found it at a garage sale, and had never seen anything like it before, so I had to have it.

Guess what? That's right, there's more. I told you this was a big box!

Friday, January 25, 2013

Before Christmas, I was thrilled to find unshelled mixed nuts at not one, but two local grocery stores. I hadn't seen them in a number of years, and remembering how much fun my youngest son and I had feeding them to the neighborhood squirrels, I bought several pounds of them. But looking at the walnuts brought back memories even further back, of "helping" my grandma make the prettiest decorations for her Christmas tree.

I could not have been more than five or six years old when Grandma Lill sat me down at the dining room table with a stack of walnuts, a paintbrush and a cup of thinned-down glue, and several packets of pretty glitter! We never got glitter at home, and rarely got it at Grandma's, as there were always little sparklies of glitter to be found around the house months afterward, no matter how thorough the cleanup seemed to be. But this time was an exception. Grandpa Bill had put a metal hanger into the top of each walnut, and Grandma "painted" them with the glue, and I sprinkled glitter on them. To my knowledge, the one pictured above is the only one of these ornaments to have survived that wonderful afternoon almost 50 years ago.

So one day last week, I went about putting gold ornament hangers into the walnuts, and gluing them in place with craft glue. This morning I did the fun part - sprinkling them with glitter - gold, silver, red, green, blue, and a shimmering opalescent. My husband may roll his eyes, but I think next year we're going to have a Christmas tree decorated with sparkly walnuts.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

I love any sort of doily that's out of the ordinary, and this neat "square in a square" design is right up my alley. I'd love to find the pattern. Below is a similar doily in variegated thread.

I have no idea what to say about this. The significance of the two pineapples at the top of the doily are intriguing... any ideas?

Here is one I made - I like traditional patterns with bold colors. Something different.

Someone had a lot of patience to makes all these small flower motifs...

The embroidery on this vintage dresser scarf really caught my eye. It's done with a heavier, twisted thread, and has an almost "relief" feel to it.

I saved my favorite, at least for this post, for last. I love crocheted butterflies! And this one is large - about 24 inches across, likely made for the back of a sofa. I found it at a garage sale. It's a little frayed in one spot, but I don't know why anyone in their right mind would want to get rid of such a beautiful piece! And the previous owners were probably wondering why anyone in their right mind would want to BUY such a thing!

Thursday, January 17, 2013

This doily, old and tattered and stained as it is, is one of my favorites. It was made by my great-grandmother, Elvirta Knutz. I don't know when she made it, but I remember seeing it on my grandmother's couch when I was young, and my grandmother gave it to me when I moved into my first home back in the 1970s.

Here's another garage sale find. I love the colors!

Who remembers silver asbestos mats? I picked these up from a garage sale. My grandmother had similar ones on her kitchen table, and it was a *big* deal to get to pick out a new cover and put it on for her. Note the Good Housekeeping seal on the back of this mat - a little ironic, knowing what we know today about asbestos!

Thursday, January 10, 2013

I've heard it said that you can't keep everything. I'm living proof that it's not true! However, there comes a point in every packrat's life where she has to start looking at her stuff with a critical eye. This morning, it was my "Doily Box," which was overflowing with "who knows what." Here are a few highlights of what I found:

This cute little hand-embroidered napkin holder is something I picked up at an auction sale in Princeville, Illinois. It has family significance for me, as the lady who did the embroidery is a distant relative, Eloise Bliss Graves. Her husband, Leo Graves, was a second cousin to my grandfather; I don't think they had seen each other since the 1940s. What wonderful timing that I was in Illinois at the same time they were holding their auction!

I got this beautiful embroidered card-table cloth at a garage sale, a frequent source of the things in my Doily Box. I look at these items and wonder about the woman who created them. Did she fall asleep at night designing her next project, as I so often do? When did she do her crafting? As she watched her children play? While she was watching television or listening to the radio? Was she a farm wife, or did she live in town? I love the history of these items as much as I enjoy the items themselves, but most of the time the history is lost.

And one final item for this post - lovely embroidered flowers gently swaying in the warm summer breeze. A welcome thought on a cold winter day!

Hello! I'm Karen, a "50-something" located in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. I'm a lab technologist by day, and by night, well, a house-cleaning, dinner-cooking, webmaster, family historian, blog-author, baseball-watching, facebooking grandma.